


A String of Empty Houses

by manic_intent



Series: Empty Houses [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian is busy getting his lip split open when he first meets Jim Moriarty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A String of Empty Houses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dramatisecho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramatisecho/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Dramatis Echo](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/6990) by dramatisecho. 



> A/N: I actually blame my obsession with Fassbender, beingevil's trolling, and the gorgeous Gerard Butler!Moran images by [[dramatis-echo](http://dramatis-echo.tumblr.com/)] (see below) for this fic. Much of the text in italics are also by dramatis-echo: go and check out her gorgeous tumblr!
> 
> People who follow my livejournal have probably already read half of it, but tumblr isn't easy to read/bookmark/follow, so I've decided to pad it out and put it on Ao3 instead. And yes, if you read Lee Child, it's quite obvious which character I'm channeling for Moran, heh.

  


_dear jim_

Sebastian is busy getting his lip split open when he first meets Jim Moriarty. 

The underground circuit's moved under an abandoned old cinema in Islington, all dust and fading posters and rot, layered over by the baying hunger of the crowd, the acrid reek of sweat, piss, and copper-bright blood. He's more of an out-fighter than a brawler, relying on the reach of his long arms and his reflexes rather than power, not because he's slightly built, by any means, but because the violence is better this way, longer this way. When he's fighting, be it with a gun cradled in his arms or with his fists, at least then the hunter's awake, not prowling restless and unsettled under his skin.

His opponent's tiring, slowing, some Irish-American built like a stack of bricks and just as slow, blood flecked teeth and split knuckles, and the fight's winding down, going to rote, when Sebastian notices the pale man in the oversized suit, standing out conspicuously from the stained wife beaters and the faded hoodies and tees, hands folded in his trouser pockets, a disconcerting smile crooked over his mouth. Unnerved, Sebastian dodges the next jab too slowly and ends up spitting blood, his back crashing against the steel net. The crowd howls over the bass beat of the awful noise from the sound system, chanting his name in a juddering rhythm, _seh-best-tian, seh-best-tian_ , and he wipes his mouth, fingers curling.

Sebastian spits, growls, sidesteps, throws a jab, then a cross with all his weight behind it, and the Irish-American staggers back, blinking slowly, before toppling back like a fine old tree, jaw shattered. Sebastian spits again, this time in contempt, rubs the back of his palm under his lip, smearing the blood on the back of his palm, and steps over his opponent's body to the door of the cage.

The weird pale man has disappeared, and Sebastian idly wonders if he'd taken one too many knocks to the head as he collects his winnings and imagined it all. He doesn't bother to count the greasy notes - it's never been about winning - ignores the slaps on his back and the baying of the crowd, picks up his duffle bag and pulls on a shirt. The blood from his lip seeps over his tongue, and he sucks it down absently, waving away an offer of an ice pack or clean cloth. 

The hunter's sated, for now, and the money looks like it'll buy him a couple of nights at the tables, poker or bridge, until he needs to smell blood again. For Sebastian Moran, ex-Army, late of the 1st Bangalore Pioneers, post-Afghanistan, gambling is not so much a vice as another way to bet his life in his spare time.

The lads have done a decent job with the soundproofing: Sebastian hears only the faint, dull rhythm of the bass by the time he threads his way up filthy stairwells and ancient, crushed cans and red-striped popcorn packs, out of the service entry into Cinema Two. The maroon upholstery on the chairs has long stained gray or brown, and the panelling and the screen has long been stripped skeletal. He trudges over towards the sole, unbarred exit, when he notices the pale man seated primly in the middle of the third row from the screen.

"Good fight, Colonel," the pale man tells him, with his crooked rictus of a smile; the curve is plastered on, as though the pale man had learned it by rote rather than by instinct. His eyes gleam with a certain penetrating intensity that Sebastian has long learned to recognise, especially when hidden among the ranks of dusty villagers clustered with otherwise weary incuriosity, usually the preface of an ambush or a suicide bombing, and Sebastian hesitates mid-step, frowning.

The neat little suit is cut too close to hide any strapped packages, though, and the pale man isn't sweating, or visibly nervous, or carrying a bag, and Sebastian relaxes, logic overruling discipline, and nods curtly, turning away-

-the pale man had called him _Colonel_ , and at Sebastian's hard, wary stare, he has the fucking nerve to start _giggling_ , a grating pitch of gasping _ah, hah, hah_ sounds, expulsions of humor learned by rote, rather than instinct. It's possibly one of the most fucking creepy sounds that Sebastian has ever heard. Sebastian takes a step back, fists clenched, then he hears a faint scrape of sound, high and to his left, up the rows of seats, from the projector room beyond, perhaps. 

"You'll need this, my dear," the pale man observes, and rather to Sebastian's astonishment, tosses him a pistol. 

It's a Smith & Wesson M&P, not one of Sebastian's favorites, one of the .45 ACPs, Zytel polymer-framed, short recoil, locked breech, no thumb safety. It's nothing like the rifles that he prefers, but after months as an unarmed civilian, the cold weight of the gun against his palm feels like he's waking up all over again, somehow, the world coming into sharp focus. Automatically, Sebastian checks the loaded chamber indicator, then he looks back up at the pale man, who smiles brightly and crookedly at him, and sinks into his chair, tugging a pair of white earphones from the inner pocket of his suit and slipping them on, and then the mad bastard closes his eyes and starts to hum, bobbing his chin.

It takes Sebastian a belated, astonished moment to recognise the opening beat to Queen's _Another one bites the dust_ , and then a shot ricochets off the wall behind him. He takes cover instinctively, scanning the shadows from the back row. The crazy bastard giggles again, like he was expecting this, but he doesn't move. There's a bullet hole in the glass of the projection room, and movement; he aims, locks his wrists, fires, and he's rusty - the gun doesn't feel like a part of him any longer, not like it once used to, but there's still a scream of pain, and the hunter breathes out.

He inches up the steep steps and the faded letters, and at 'D', the mad pale bastard begins to clap along to the beat in his head, _another-one-bites-the-dust, (clap clap), another-one-bites-the-dust_ \- He doesn't have too bad a singing voice, Irish, maybe, but it's background noise to Sebastian now, as fucking weird as it is. Someone is trying to kill him, and if the crazy bastard wants to sing in the background, that's not important right now. A man in a gray hoodie and a black balaclava steps out of the projector room, raising a gun, and Sebastian waits, draws a bead in an even breath, fires, a quick double tap, and the man drops, his own shot going wide.

The projector room contains one heavily wounded man and a third trying to stop the bleeding on his shoulder, and calmly, Sebastian shoots the third man, and turns his gun on the first one. "Who are you, and why the hell are you trying to kill me?"

"Do your worst," the wounded man spits, and then he screams when Sebastian steps over to grind his heel into the open wound.

"Just kill him, he's not going to be very helpful." Sebastian looks up sharply, gun raised, but the pale man merely grins his crooked little grin at him from the door, skinny arms folded over his chest. "He's one cog down a long chain, he isn't wearing any identification, and he'll bleed out before you can get anything from him."

"Who are _you_?" Sebastian demands, confused and high on adrenaline, and the pale man hands him a square card from between his thumb and forefinger, with a peculiar, mincing delicacy.

"I'm a consultant," the pale man drawls, "A very specialised one. Broking information is an important part of my business."

"Why are you helping me?" The card has a single printed name, 'Jim Moriarty', no address, no phone number.

"Am I?" Moriarty arches his eyebrows, swaying back, his gaze flicking up, then back at the bodies at his feet. "Keep the gun, Colonel. You'll need it. For the next time that you refuse when someone asks you to throw a fight."

The crazy bastard slinks off, still humming and sashaying and clapping his hands to the beat, and put that way, it's pretty damned obvious, especially when Sebastian checks the loaded chamber indicator. Two shots left, and he's used four, six bullets in a ten round magazine. Two more perfect kills, and he already knows his targets. He breaks the wounded man's neck, as an afterthought.

One week later, as Sebastian winds his way back to his Camden flat, out of the circuit permanently, or for now, anyway, and running low on his winnings, he nearly walks right into Moriarty when he climbs the stairs. Moriarty gives him one of his wide plastic grins, and Sebastian clenches his hands in the pockets of his coat to keep from shuddering. He's long learned to be wary of men with eyes like Moriarty's; men with a taste for mayhem, men who feared nothing, who would do anything.

"Here." Sebastian hands the gun back politely; it's empty, and he's gone to the trouble of cleaning it, though he hasn't bothered to try and get more ammunition.

"You don't want it?" Moriarty, however, squirrels the gun away into his suit.

"I prefer Glocks," Sebastian replies calmly, and forces himself to hold Moriarty's penetrating stare. He can see where this is going, anyway, with all the mad inevitability of someone with little to lose and with his sense of caution long baked away on the Hindu Kush.

"Or a Springfield bolt action?" Moriarty's crooked smile widens, showing his teeth. 

"Could be," Sebastian inclines his head, and he doesn't flinch when Moriarty claps him on the arm, a fraction too sharply, and slips an envelope into his faded shirt pocket. It's thick, and spotted with grease, and Sebastian makes no move to touch it.

"Come by Mayfair tomorrow. Claridge's. Try to wear something suitable, but not too suitable." There's another flash of teeth, in perfect white ridges. "We'll see how good you are at conveying non-lethal but overwhelming disappointment." 

Sebastian takes the packet from his shirt pocket, and offers it to Moriarty, who slips his hands behind his back. "If you want to hire my trigger finger, fine. Anything else, find someone else." The words _I'm not a thug_ freeze on the tip of his tongue - he'll just be a _specialised_ thug, won't he, and what's the bloody difference anyway, between beating someone into a pulp in a cage match or in a hotel room, but Moriarty blinks, slowly, as though he'd heard it anyway.

"You're holding ten thousand pounds," Moriarty tells him, his gaze darting between Sebastian's hand and the healing split on Sebastian's lip, and then he smiles again and somehow it's even more disconcerting, this time, his lips stretched as far as they can go, teeth bared.

"I can make the money myself if I want to," Sebastian shrugs, although it's not very convincing, what with the gambling and his current ban from the circuit and his inability to actually value currency, they both know it; Moriarty is giggling again, _ah, hah, hah_ , making the hair on the back of his neck prickle.

"Okay, Seb, okay, _soldier_. Keep the money. Go to Claridge's anyway, have a nice lunch, on me. We'll find something else for you to do," Moriarty sidles closer, as Sebastian puts the packet back into his pocket, and then abruptly, there's a flare of mad, violent anger in the pale man's eyes, so furiously intense that Sebastian takes an instinctive step back and raises his fists. "But _don't_ ," Moriarty continues, in a low snarl, as if he doesn't notice, " _Question me again_."

The lunch at Ramsey's in Claridge's is excellent, and the bill is blank when it comes. As he leaves, the maitre d' wordlessly hands him a smartphone; the man looks pale and waxen under his starched collar, he avoids Sebastian's eyes, and he stinks of fear. Once he steps outside, the phone beeps, and it takes him a moment to figure out how to unlock it.

There's a name that he doesn't recognise, and an address. At the lobby, the first London cab that pulls up for him has a long black box in the back seat.

  
_the second most dangerous man in London_   


The traffic rumbles past, and Sebastian estimates that he's got about twenty minutes tops before someone calls up on him, traffic police or council. He's parked along the Spaghetti Junction near Birmingham, traffic cones surrounding his unremarkable white van, and he's on his elbows at the back, sighting down a small aperture cut into the van, watching the flyover directly beneath this one. The traffic is slower on the flyover, cars stretched in a bumper to bumper crawl outward, and Sebastian studies their plates with the patience of experience. If not for the ever present threat of being investigated by inquisitive officials, he's happy to stay in the back of the van like this for hours.

Moriarty's given him a Springfield MIA Super Match autoloader for this job, .308 ten shot box magazine, heavy premium barrel, American walnut stock. It's not one of his favorites, either, and Moriarty seemed to have known this when he had grinned his plastic grin and handled it over with no more finesse or delicacy than an over-arm toss, but it's still a fine gun, and at least he's had choice of ammunition - Lake City M852s, brass hollow point boat tails.

Elbows and belly and knees. He's waited like this, hundreds upon thousands of times, all over the broken parts of the world, crawled through the dust or the scree or undergrowth into position, waited for the target, his mind a blank of calm. One shot, and one kill, that's the credo stitched deep into his hunter's soul. He's done the set up and the planning. Now it's all about Moriarty's information making good.

He doesn't know how long he's been waiting by the time the bronze Jaguar rolls into view. Sebastian sights the custom number plate - ADAIR - with satisfaction, and up, to the pale blonde man with the snub nose in the back passenger seat. Sebastian doesn't know who the pale blonde man is, or why Moriarty has decided he has to die; more importantly, he finds that he doesn't care. Moral curiosity has long been scrubbed out of him - he's a soldier in a new war, and he'll follow kill orders unquestioningly, just as he always had.

He breathes in, adjusts his sights, and the first cold shot flowers a pink cloud in the back of the Jaguar. He breathes out, closes his eyes, then folds the rifle carefully in a cloth. It takes a minute more to pick up the traffic cones, and then he's pulling out into the afternoon traffic, thumbing up the radio until he feels the dashboard vibrate, _well do ya, do ya do ya wanna_ -

Moriarty's sprawled over a bench in Coventry Square, a turquoise paper box on his lap, filled with half a line of ludicrously coloured round biscuits, licking crumbs off his fingers. A few hopeful pigeons bob around his patent leather shoes, and Moriarty doesn't look up when Sebastian folds himself onto the sun-warmed metal.

"Macaron?" Moriarty doesn't offer the box, though.

"No thanks." The van's in one of Moriarty's many safe houses, being scrubbed down, and Sebastian's in his second change of clothes. Close by, a stork-thin man is carefully inserting the evening's headlines into the side panels of the newsagent's with steady hands, clearly practiced. His mark's name features prominently, in loud Franklin Gothic typeface: _ADAIR MURDERED_ \- LONE MYSTERY GUNMAN - SCOTLAND YARD BAFFLED - MAYOR CALLS FOR CALM. Sebastian nods to himself, vaguely satisfied. 

"Have the liquorice, I hate that one," Moriarty passes him a black macaron, and the manic intensity to his stare seems dulled, into that blank stillness which is what passes as contentment for his new employer. Sebastian eats the macaron without comment. It's a touch too sweet, and he swallows quickly. 

They sit in comfortable silence, with Moriarty lost in the knife-sharp shards of his mind and Sebastian sitting with his feet pressed flat on the pavement, checking passers-by idly against the threat lists that he had once learned by memory and hard experience. The newspaper man finishes lining up four neat front pages, and scurries back into his shop to hand over a pack of mints to a jogger in exchange for a crumpled note, her ash blonde hair bound high on her skull, over a pink headband, her breasts tight and small against her tank top. Sebastian watches the line of her legs and the curve of her waist, and thinks that she probably has a route, through a park, probably, or past any number of narrow streets lined with tall buildings riddled with fire escapes, and he knows how to compensate for pace and stride.

"Your type?" Moriarty cuts into his mental calculations with a mocking grin, the least plastic of his smiles.

"No." 

"Really? She's hot. Look at those hips." 

Sebastian shrugs. Wolves aren't particularly interested in sheep, save as prey, but he doesn't voice the observation.

"You prefer guys then? Twinks?" When Sebastian merely shrugs again, Moriarty huffs out a sigh. "You've got to talk to me, Seb. I might be your boss, but I'm also your friend, aren't I?" His lips draw tight into a sharp rictus, and Moriarty's eyes are narrowed, even as he selects a lemon yellow macaron from the box. "I want to know about you," he adds, even though Sebastian is sure that Moriarty already knows everything that there is to know about Sebastian. He probably even knows things about Sebastian that Sebastian himself hasn't even found out about yet. 

Somehow, this isn't disconcerting in the least, not any longer. Desensitisation, perhaps.

"No preference," Sebastian states quietly. His instincts scent danger, and possible impending violence, and as always it focuses him, on the faint scent of cologne, something expensive, to the slim cut of Moriarty's gray suit, the crumbs and stains on his mouth. Desire pulses, surprising and unwelcome and bloody stupid, given the nature of the person who had just inspired it, and Sebastian glances away, a little too hastily.

He can hear Moriarty finishing the macaron as he watches the jogger pad off into the crowd, and then cold fingers clamp over the back of his neck and drag him over, much to his shock. Sebastian blinks as Moriarty kisses him in a hard press of lips that has nothing of lust; it's a stake, or another command - as he starts to part his mouth, the fingers curl tighter over his neck in a warning. And now Sebastian knows, wryly, dizzily, with a cold sense of shock, that whether he likes it or not, whether he does in fact end up in Moriarty's bed or not, or looking down the barrel of Moriarty's own Smith & Wesson, he's going to follow this crazy bastard for the rest of his life.

  


_If you want him, you'll have to go through me._  


"You look _ter_ -rib- _le_ ," Moriarty sing-songs gleefully, mincing around Sebastian as he straightens his tie in the mirror in the hotel room's ludicrously large bathroom.

They're in the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, and Sebastian is beginning to harbor increasing doubts about the whole enterprise. Although the _Solntsevskaya bratva_ have been duly impressed by Moriarty's consultations on streamlining their prostitution and arms trafficking enterprises, Sebastian is beginning to harbor an uneasy feeling in his gut, and his instincts have long served him well. The Russian syndicate is an old one, after all, and they're notoriously unfriendly to other Russian syndicates, let alone a foreign one. He has no fucking idea why Moriarty had even agreed to come to Moscow in the first place, but he suspects boredom and/or curiosity. Damn him.

" _You_ picked this suit, sir," Sebastian replies mildly. It's well-cut, hiding the line of his pistol and his knives strapped to his body beneath the black wool, but the five-thousand-dollar French tailor-made get-up somehow still sits poorly over his shoulders. He's a wolf in ill-fitting sheep's clothing. The analogy amuses, and his lips quirk faintly.

Moriarty pauses in mid-step, with a quick glance between Sebastian and the mirror even as Sebastian schools his face, and he folds his thin arms tightly over his narrow chest. Other people being amused at him happens to be one of the few constant flashpoints to Moriarty's otherwise volatile temper, and he drawls, as Sebastian predicted, "A ruble for your thoughts?"

"If this was an attempt to make me look respectable, it's failed. Sir," Sebastian wasn't intending to joke, but Moriarty laughs - giggles, actually, and Lord, that manic sound never fails to raise Sebastian's figurative hackles - and rocks back against the marble sink. The tension fades, thankfully, once the gasping chuckles die down, and Sebastian relaxes, warily. He's seen Moriarty attack a victim fatally with a fountain pen, before, for a perceived insult; where murder is concerned, Moriarty is a textbook psychopath.

"Actually, you look ex- _actly_ as I thought you would," Moriarty drawls, reaching over to straighten Sebastian's tie with a careful tug, his metronome mood already swung back into good humor. "Now let's go and talk to those nice Russian mafia people again. I'm getting _bored_ with Moscow. We'll wrap up, and then get on the next flight back to London. MI6 does get so very bored when I'm gone." 

Sebastian nods, more out of acknowledgement than anything else. London has never held any extra meaning to him; the hunter feels at home only during the hunt, and he's just as comfortable perched on a tree in the Kumaon jungle as he is threading through the London smog and keeping to the shadows. 

Because a bored Moriarty is a dangerous Moriarty who doesn't give a rat's fuck about what he spits from his pretty little mouth, even in the presence of the scions of one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world, matters degenerate quickly. Particularly when Moriarty laughs outright in said scions' faces when he is offered a place in the _bratva_. Sebastian spends the rapidly hostile meeting alternating between a quiet impulse to strangle his employer and a quick tactical recollection of the best memorized escape route.

It's messy, and it's not Sebastian at his tactical best, but he manages to fight their way through the Metropol to street level, hijack a fortuitous black Lamborghini Reventon that was in the process of pulling up at the hotel, and streak away into the traffic. Beside him, sprawled in the passenger's seat, the devil is laughing, unharmed but bloodied, his collar askew and his tie partly undone, squirming in his seat to peek at the chaos that they have left in their wake. 

"Nice car like this," Moriarty settles back in his seat, teeth bared in a wild grin, "There's got to be a _migalka_ somewhere. A blue siren," he elaborates impatiently, when Sebastian frowns at him, confused, as though Sebastian is being ignorant on purpose. "It's one of the privileges that you can earn as one of the Russian elite. It'll get us to the airport more quickly."

They find the little blue siren in a compartment, and with it attached to the roof, it works wonders; cars swerve desperately out of their way as they burn up the speed limit. Sebastian ignores the gleeful exhortations of his boss to fatally interact with unsuspecting pedestrians, as well as the stinging pain from the bullet graze wounds on his right thigh and ribs, speeding towards the Domodedovo airport. 

It's possible that the _Solntsevskaya_ are waiting for them there, but he doubts that their guard on Moriarty's private jet would have gone down without a fair fight, and as to Moriarty himself, it'll take far more than a fair fight for the _bratva_ to get through Sebastian to the devil that he guards.

"Wake me up when we're there," Moriarty instructs, apparently unconcerned about the disaster that he has wrought, squirming to prop his feet on Sebastian's lap, shoulders curled against leather upholstery, and as Sebastian exhales behind gritted teeth, his patience stretching tight, Moriarty deliberately swipes his fingers through the blood spatter on his collar and neck. The blood's from one of the _bratva_ thugs who'd gotten too close; Sebastian had been in the middle of a reload, and had to use his knife instead; the combat knife is wicked sharp, and it had sliced the thug's throat open with a single sideways swipe, nearly ear to ear. The blood's bright, arterial bright, and Moriarty smiles lazily as he brings his fingers up to his own lips, smearing them crimson.

Christ.

They nearly drive straight into a truck, and Moriarty snickers, as Sebastian swears and swerves. "Careful, my dear," Moriarty rebukes, as he crosses his feet, and Sebastian nods tightly, swallowing his sigh, hooking his fingers into his tie to jerk it loose. They have a plane to catch.

  


_“Dear Sebastian,  
I request the pleasure of your company, and your total, unquestionable submission.  
Sincerely, Jim Moriarty.”_  


The post-it notes are the worst.

The so-called foremost consulting criminal in the world walks like a cat, and to a mind used to juggling entire illicit empires locks are at best a minor irritation. Often, Sebastian wakes to his SoHo loft littered with tiny, gaudy rectangles. Sometimes they're filled with unrelated quotes drawn from an esoteric range of literature, or arranged in cartoonish smileys. Usually, for some reason that his uncomplicated hunter's mind cannot immediately fathom, they're blank.

On very rare occasions, they contain instructions, which Sebastian would immediately burn after reading, and as much as this is a needlessly risky method of giving him tasks, Sebastian recognises that within Moriarty's pale forehead resides a machine of a mind, and genius oft goes hand in hand with a touch of madness. 

Today the loft is empty, and there is one bright pink rectangle, stuck onto a smooth lacquered black box. Sebastian scrubs at his face with the heel of his hand, yawning, and snags the post-it note as he pads over to make himself a cup of coffee, reading it absently as he goes.

The words register only belatedly, when the percolator is gurgling away, and Sebastian rereads the note, first with disbelief, then breathlessly, and he stalks back to the kitchen table, coffee forgotten. Surely Moriarty couldn't have guessed, couldn't have _thought_ -

The lacquer box opens with a liquid click, and within it, coiled on a bed of maroon satin, is a coil of pleated black leather, about the width of his forefinger, one end curled into a loop, the other in a silver catch. It's a leash, with no collar. A signal. A message, perhaps, or part of one; or, knowing Moriarty, a little puzzle piece at the start of yet another one of his often ridiculous, cruel games. Still, Sebastian has never shaved and dressed so quickly in his life. 

Moriarty's favorite residence is an old stone-fronted house in Mayfair. It's stately, handsome, and it's a massive fucking security risk that sometimes gives Sebastian some cause for concern. The guard lets him in without a word, and Sebastian takes himself up the mahogany stairs to the mezzanine floor, where Moriarty's study would be, trying not to look too closely at the increasingly eclectic choice of art pieces that adorn otherwise baroque furnishings, in a deliberate clash of cultures, taste, and new and old money.

A new Warhol in its neon hues holds pride of place at the top of the stairs, and Sebastian ignores the guard who glances at him, striding past to the second door on his left.

Moriarty's study is picture perfect corporate, all stainless steel, glass and black leather, a sprawling hi fi system rounding one wall, a glass desk set close to the window. Moriarty is seated cross-legged on the black couch in a soft white turtleneck and a black jacket, another neon Warhol behind him, his feet bared, apparently reading. There's a collar in matching black pleated leather beside his left thigh, etched in platinum and the promise of vice. Sebastian swallows.

"You made good time."

"Caught a cab," Sebastian explains, gruffly, and belatedly realizes that he's still holding the leash looped in his palm. "Sir."

"Well, don't stand at ceremony," The pink edge of Moriarty's mouth curls. "Come here, Seb."  


Rather woodenly, Sebastian approaches, beginning to regret his hastily chosen shirt and his black jeans. He wonders if he should have tried to dress for the occasion, or whether indeed there was one. Moriarty plays in a web of tests and signals; sometimes he likes to pull a few strings just to watch the cornered fly dance to his tune, just because he can. Sebastian waits, for a long moment, a foot away from the couch, to Moriarty's left, and then, when Moriarty merely hums, without looking up, he kneels, jeans pressed into the plush chocolate-brown carpet. 

The book snaps shut with a clap of sound that startles. Moriarty tosses it cavalierly aside, and then he loops the collar around his fingers, smirking lazily when Sebastian's breathing turns shallow.  


"Do you think," Moriarty asks idly, touching the leather briefly to his lips, the bloody tease, "That an old _shikaree_ can learn a few new tricks?"

Sebastian doesn't speak; he knows when it's not needed. Instead, he tilts his head, to bare his neck, even as the hunter within him curls, wary and unhappy at the gesture. Cool palms press against his skin and the hastily shaved stubble, circling the pulse at his jugular, and then his breath catches and his cock jumps as smooth leather encircles his neck.

He's incredibly out of practice, but Moriarty doesn't seem to notice, fingers twisted into his hair and curled over his collar, between the leather and the pulse in Sebastian's neck as he opens his mouth for every greedy shove down his throat. He could kill Moriarty like this if he bites down, Sebastian thinks, and breathes the musk deep, nose pressed into coarse hair; the very thought makes him moan and press the heel of his hand against his cock to keep from coming.

  


_rarefied mathematics_  


Sebastian leans with his back against the closed doors to the lecture theatre, arms folded, concentrating on footsteps and lines of sight, his Glock 22 pressed to his ribs, in the holster under his jacket. Pistols again. At the lecture podium, Moriarty is prancing around the desk, the way he does when he's getting a little too full of himself, and the expert witness is sunk into a chair, pale and sweating. Algorithms cover the whiteboard behind the professor in scrawls that Sebastian no longer recognises. His Eton and Oxford days have long been relegated to the past; he barely even remembers what he used to study.

Eventually, Moriarty leaves a tiny Remington derringer on the professor's desk, his hands sheathed in surgical gloves, and Sebastian quietly slips his hand into his suit, closing his fingers around the grip of the Glock. Here's where it gets tricky; the Remington has one bullet, and it's shit all for aim, especially in the hands of a frightened beginner, but if the professor tries to be a hero, he's more than close enough to put a shot through Moriarty's grinning mouth. 

Sebastian's sure that he can draw faster than the professor can figure out how to release the safety, and he'll definitely be able to put a shot through the professor's waxen dome of a skull before the old man can start to sight up. The professor doesn't touch the gun, however, just shakes and sobs and whines from his desk, and Moriarty sashays over to Sebastian, looking bored as Sebastian steps aside and opens the door for him.

They're about three metres out when Sebastian picks up the muffled report of a pocket handgun, and Moriarty grins, shoves his hands into his jeans pockets, and starts to whistle the opening tune to _bright sunshiny day_. Despite himself, Sebastian snorts. It's a Friday, and the hallways are empty; the professor would probably prove to be a nasty surprise for the evening janitor, but by that time they'd have long returned to Mayfair.

"See. No trouble at all," Moriarty tells him, as they get into the nondescript old Toyota in the parking lot.

Sebastian nods slowly. This job isn't particularly complex by any means, and they could have used any one of the Hamptons to get it done, even. Moriarty didn't have to come personally. He does not, however, say anything, as he starts up the car. 

"You're sulking," Moriarty grumbles, pouting and sunken in the front passenger seat. "This business is all about the _personal_ touch, Seb. New Age management."

"Yes, sir." 

"You're still sulking. Can't have my Chief of Staff sulking." Moriarty prods him in the shoulder with a bony finger. "Chin up, old boy! You're acting like someone _died_ on us." He pauses, and snickers, and adds, " _Well_ , other than the obvious," with his usual unbelievably horrific sense of humour, and Sebastian snorts again, though he relaxes. He'll drop Moriarty back at Mayfair, then he'll head over to Camden to check on the new racketeering ring-

"Turn left here," Moriarty pokes him again in the shoulder, and Sebastian frowns at the road. Left, according to the GPS, was definitely the wrong direction, but he obeys, the car rattling and jumping as it manoeuvres off asphalt onto gravel. The road curves into a copse of trees, then along an empty field, overlooking trees and a sluggish brook. He can still see the rooftop outline of the small university that they've left behind them, over the trees, even as he scans the field, puzzled.

"All right, stop." The moment Sebastian brakes, Moriarty climbs into his lap, all bony knees and elbows and his crazy, plastic grin. The car's far too small for this, and despite Moriarty's pout he fucks the mad bastard on the warm hood of the car instead, jerking Moriarty up an inch over the creaking metal with each brutal thrust and panting like a wounded animal until his master's satisfied. The hood of the car's never quite going to be the same again; they're going to have to junk the piece of shit once they're back.

Moriarty starts whistling again, later, loudly this time, when they're finally headed to London, slouched into his seat with his knees spread, his mouth kiss-swollen, hair tousled; he smells of sex and sweat and quite possibly, Sebastian's considerable personal reckless stupidity. Sebastian sighs and turns up the radio until it blares.

  


_"Dear Sebastian,  
You will 'knot' move until I come home.  
Get it? Love, J.M."_  


The rope around his wrists that binds him to the solidly antique posts of the four-poster bed is silk weave, with simple knots that he could undo blindfolded if he wanted to, but Sebastian rests his chin on the rich brown sheets with a deep sigh, glaring at the yellow post-it note stuck onto the solid maple bar over the foot of the bed. His bastard of a lover-employer-tormentor has even drawn a little smiley face at the corner. Moriarty always thinks that he's so _fucking_ funny.

Yawning widely, Sebastian drops himself back down into the semi-alert doze of a trained soldier. He's learned to sleep anywhere, anytime, and being tied on a bed isn't much hardship when you've spent more than half a decade crabbing around the Middle East, dodging shrapnel and land mines. The hunter within him doesn't like being held down, doesn't like being forced to be stationary, but logically Sebastian knows that if he really wants to, he can get out of the knots and over to the pistol at the side table within a matter of minutes. This isn't about being firmly restrained, after all - Moriarty knows that, and so does Sebastian. It's about the bloody symbolism that Moriarty loves so goddamned much, and the smart little bastard _loves_ testing his limits.

Asshole.

It takes a few hours or so, give or take, judging from the creep of the sun up the wall, when Sebastian starts to feel hungry and thirsty, that the discomfort really starts. His stomach is growling where it's pressed against the sheets, and although Sebastian's been hungrier and thirstier before and in worse circumstances, it's not particularly a life experience that he usually cares to repeat. He squirms, muscle flexing against the rope, as he grits his teeth. His arms are cramped, strained in their sockets from the enforced stretch, and Sebastian groans, pressing his forehead against the sheets and cursing under his breath in Spanish. 

By the time he runs out of invective, his throat feels raw, but at least he no longer feels hungry. Licking his lips, Sebastian glowers at the post-it note and resents the leather pleated collar snug against his neck, fingers curling. He might have sold his soul and his gun to the devil, but he's still a proud man. Enforced, passive compliance goes against the very grain of his nature.

The sun's beginning to creep back down by the time Sebastian's exasperation starts to bleed into worry. Surely Moriarty should have been back by now. Maybe Moriarty got too cocky. Maybe some MI6 agent got too lucky. Maybe that uptight brother of that private detective decided to go for more direct means of getting rid of one of London's blackest sheep. 

Sebastian twists his right hand, his teeth pressed into his lip, fingering the knots. He'll wait another five minutes. Ten. All he needs to do is get to a phone, call one of Sebastian's security detail-  


The sun's several inches lower by the time Sebastian's worry is winning its flanking battle against his instinct to obey, and he shifts his weight, twisting his right hand over to start at the knots. Thankfully, he doesn't get far - the door creaks open, and for a long, blessed moment of relief Sebastian is so gratified to realize that Moriarty is alive and impeccably in one piece that he forgets how he's obviously begun to disobey.

Moriarty clucks his tongue - nothing escapes the bloody devil - but he sidles over, hands curled behind his back, a knowing little smirk on his lips. "Was my note a little too subtle for you?"

"Fuck you," Sebastian rasps. He's hungry again, and he has an increasingly pressing need to piss; his arms ache and he's fucking had it with Moriarty's idiotic little power games.

"My word, such language," Moriarty shakes his head, and slides his palm lazily down the black sleeve over Sebastian's right arm, fingertips pressing into the muscle definition, up to his shoulders, to the collar pressed against Sebastian's neck. "What _shall_ I do with you."

"You could let me bloody go," Sebastian growls, "I need to use the bathroom."

"Oh, _dearest_ ," Moriarty chides, his smile now small and sharp, "Such a _simple_ thing I ask of you, and you become so very, very _difficult_. We can't have that, can we?"

Sebastian is about to advise in crude terms that he's either going to have to insist on being difficult or the sheets are going to regret it, when Moriarty shifts up onto the bed to straddle his back, shoes pressed against Sebastian's thighs and knees against his ribs, and through his peripheral vision Sebastian can see Moriarty drawing a switchblade from his breast pocket. The blade flicks out, silent and deadly, and Moriarty arches an eyebrow at him. 

When Sebastian doesn't move, Moriarty fits the tip of the knife against the cuff of his shirt, holding the knife with arch delicacy as he begins, so very deliberately, to slice the sleeve off Sebastian's arm, working all the way up to his shoulder. Eyes fixed on the edge of the knife, Sebastian doesn't even realize that he's stopped breathing until spots begin to dance over his vision. 

Moriarty takes his damned time, and he isn't gentle about it; Sebastian's suffering from quite a few nicks by the time the shirt's sliced off his back, and he sucks in a tight, high breath as Moriarty digs the thumb of his free hand into one of the fresh, shallow cuts, and grins, teeth bared, like a snarl. Sebastian's throat feels raw, he's hungry again and oddly tired, his arms _hurt_ now and his back and shoulders sting from the blade of the knife and he's hard, so fucking hard that it's agony. He tries to rub himself against the sheets, anything, but Moriarty's pinned him with his weight and his knees.

"Sir-"

"We're back to the honorifics now, are we?" Moriarty interrupts, so goddamned smug about it. "What do you want, Seb?"

"I want you to-"

"Ah, _ah_ , ah, wrong answer, darling," Moriarty nicks his left bicep with the tip of the knife, and Sebastian hisses at the sting, then moans as Moriarty leans over, presses the tip of his tongue against the bead of welling blood.

"Jesus Christ," Sebastian groans, "What the _fuck_ do you want me to say?"

"I need you to _understand_ ," Moriarty flicks the blade back into its handle and tosses it off the bed, "That your place by my side must come with un _quest_ ioning obedience. No matter what I tell you to do. No matter what might happen to me. Otherwise, I have no use for you. Do you understand?"

"If you wanted a dog you could have bought a dog," Sebastian snarls, but he doesn't pull at his bindings, and Moriarty smirks at him, hands splayed over his shoulders, teeth finding the lobe of his left ear and tugging.

"I don't want a dog," Moriarty whispers into his ear, all censure in his tone melted into honey, "I wanted a soldier, Colonel. Now. We'll try this again. What do you want?"

Sebastian's shoulders flex, but he grits out, "Whatever _you_ want, _sir_."

"Better." Moriarty nips at the nape of his neck, pushing up his collar, making him gasp. "But there's _so_ much work that needs to be done on you yet, my dear." 

As Moriarty's lips and teeth creep gradually down his spine, Sebastian whines and squirms for it like a bitch. This is - hopefully - where it usually gets good. Moriarty bites down just under his shoulder blade and works his teeth into it, his chuckle muffled when Sebastian jerks and yelps. It's almost a pity that vanilla sex bores Moriarty, along with so-called 'common meatbag dynamics'; like everything that Moriarty seems to enjoy, this has to have mayhem underlying it all, and inevitably someone gets bloodied and/or fucked over.

When he's done making Sebastian beg to his satisfaction, Moriarty frees one of his wrists, tugs him onto his back and gives him a particularly vicious blowjob, all teeth and impatient jerks; it's possibly one of the worst blowjobs that Sebastian has ever been on the receiving end of, and somewhat to his vague surprise he comes anyway, keening and shaking, and it's so intense that he doesn't register the tear tracks down his cheeks until Moriarty runs the tip of his tongue over his skin.

  


_all his toy soldiers_  


Moriarty comes back from what he insists on cheerfully calling 'The Big House' looking like he's been thoroughly worked over, pale and bruised, teeth chipped, one eye swelling shut, the fingers of his left hand freshly cast, and he laughs for a mad, gasping minute and a half at the black look that Sebastian accidentally lets slip over his expression when he answers the summons to Mayfair.

His reckless motherfucker of a boss is sitting cross-legged on a Queen Anne chair in the drawing room, at a freshly set table for two, and there's a silver tea set and a tiered stand layered with scones and clotted cream, sandwiches and Victorian sponge, his unbroken fingers curled over the delicate bone china handle of a gold-trimmed white teacup. 

"I'm recuperating, as you can see," Moriarty declares, looking far too goddamned pleased for a man who's got to be in agony no matter how much painkiller he's hopped up on, and he waves Sebastian to the chair.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've already _told_ you, Seb, don't be tedious," Moriarty pouts. "Darjeeling? Assam?"

"You got caught on _purpose_ ," Sebastian snaps, because it's been a fucking trial of a week, what with Moriarty's bright ideas at the start of it, then his abrupt disappearance, then working the phones and his contacts and pulling enough strings and favours to get Moriarty out of MI6's loving hands, only for his boss to take it all for fucking _granted_. "What the fuck." 

"'You got caught on purpose, _sir_ ,'" Moriarty corrects primly, raising his cup to his broken lip and sipping. "Sit down, Seb. Darjeeling or Assam?"

"I don't want any-"

" _Sit down_ ," Moriarty states, in the deadly calm that he gets when he's on the precipice of what their outfit calls one of 'Jim's Moods', and Sebastian sucks in a sharp breath, grits his teeth, and sits down. "Answer my question."

Sebastian glares, and manages a tight, "I'll have whatever you're having, _sir_."

"Darjeeling then. Excellent choice, if I may say so myself." Moriarty glances to a side, and one of the maids trots anxiously away. The Mayfair staff, including the guards, are all highly strung today, and Sebastian wonders if Moriarty's mauled anyone while he was on his way here. "Just out of Samabeong."

Sebastian scowls, because Moriarty's rapidly accelerating into one of his other sort of Moods, the one where he goes fuck all loopy and can't be persuaded to give anyone a straight answer and has to have all the sharp implements confiscated from the immediate vicinity; the one where Sebastian has to cajole his goddamned boss into sitting down and listening to some Arcade Fire until he's calmed back down. He doesn't know how the outfit used to deal with it before he went up the ranks and figured out the magic ritual. Try and avoid Moriarty for a few hours, maybe, or draw straws and send in a sacrificial lamb.

"How much Vicodin are you on?"

Moriarty ignores him, curled into his chair and staring intently at the sandwiches. "The watercress ones are _mi_ -ne," he lilts dreamily, "You can't _ha_ -ve them."

"Okay," Sebastian mutters wearily. "Someone get me the boss' iPod."

One of the guards hastily slips out of the room, even as the maid returns with a cup of steaming tea and another bone china teapot, balanced next to the tiered stand. "Milk," Sebastian reminds her, because if he has to drink something caffeinated other than coffee and coke then it had better be unrecognisable. Moriarty pulls a disgusted face at him, complete with a stuck out tongue, but Sebastian ignores him as the maid scurries out. 

"I told them that I would be out in twelve hours," Moriarty reaches over for a watercress sandwich. "Eleven hours, thirty five minutes. Not bad."

"I'm your goddamned chief of staff," Sebastian retorts. "And it'll be _nice_ if I could be kept in the loop now and then, _sir_."

"Oh, _sure_ ," Moriarty beams in his frozen rictus of a smile, as though he doesn't know what his obsession with Sherlock Holmes is beginning to do to his own outfit, what with getting himself employed as a technician at a hospital, or all the resources that he's spending keeping tabs on the private detective and his thankfully tiny circle of associates, or that stunt in the swimming pool, and now, it seems, playing kiss up with MI6. "Nothing's burned down in my absence, has it?"

"Everything's in place for your 'big day'," Sebastian states flatly. "Tower of London, Bank of England, Pentonville Prison. As you wanted."

"'As you wanted, _sir_ ,'" Moriarty corrects, through a mouthful of bread and watercress. 

And there again, another remarkable waste of resources, a triple heist with no actual economic result. It'll be good marketing, if everything goes to plan, but Sebastian really doubts that that's what Moriarty is looking for. He's engaged in a game of cat and mouse with another crazy sod, and Scotland Yard, MI6, and one of the most organised criminal syndicates in Europe are all merely collateral. With resignation, Sebastian supposes that he never quite expected this to head any other way. Sooner or later, Moriarty would have grown bored with just breaking the system.

Still, turning so many resources just to destroy one man seems rather excessive, when a bullet to the head from a vantage point could suffice, but Sebastian knows better than to point this out, especially when Moriarty's still in this sort of state. 

The guard reappears with the iPod, but Moriarty refuses to put on the earphones until Sebastian's forced down a cup of tea, a scone, and a smoked salmon sandwich, and then he seems to fall asleep partway through _Neon Bible_ and Sebastian has to carry him up to the master bedroom.

"Honey, you should see me in a crown," Moriarty mumbles, in his sleep or in a Vicodin daze, Sebastian isn't entirely sure, as he pulls off his boss' shoes and jacket and tucks him in.

"I have," Sebastian replies absently. Moriarty wears his madness and his genius and his utter disregard for humanity just like one, and it makes him both unimaginably powerful and unimaginably insufferable at the best of times. Moriarty scrabbles for his wrist as Sebastian removes the earphones and stops the iPod, but he doesn't wake, and with another sigh, Sebastian pulls up a chair and slouches into it, hands loose at his sides.

  


_Tiger, Tiger_  


Sebastian is absorbed in the careful disassembly of his favorite rifle, a custom CheyTac Intervention chambered for the .408 CheyTac ammunition, fitted with a Leica scope with a standard crosshairs engraving on the reticule. He sits cross-legged on a sheet stained with old grease marks and gunpowder, the suppressor cylinder already carefully set to one side, the ammunition to another. His mind drifts, locked into comfortable routine, an old hunter preparing to lick its claws.

Music pulses in a drubbing rhythm that his mind has relegated to background noise, some sort of vaguely Germanic caterwauling. The rifle doesn't require anything more than a quick clean, and he carefully removes the bolt, then the scope, each item placed carefully within their own space. He's threading a cleaning patch through the jib at the end of the cleaning rod when the music mulls down, to a dim heartbeat, and then Sebastian nearly bites down on his tongue when dead weight sprawls over his back.

It takes him a sharp, tight breath for the logical part of his mind to override the instinct to twist back and away and make a grab for the pale neck pressed against the back of his skull.

"Don't do that," Sebastian mutters, and adds, "Sir," as an afterthought, when Moriarty _tsks_ at him, skinny arms pushed over Sebastian's broad shoulders and the old gray Army shirt stretched over his biceps. 

"I'm bored," Moriarty declares petulantly, jaw pressed over his scalp, and Sebastian sucks in a slow breath as he steadies his hands, soaking the patch in solvent. "Entertain me, Seb, that's what you're paid to do, aren't you? Well? Well?"

"I'm paid to kill for you, sir," Sebastian corrects him, carefully inserting the rod into the muzzle of the rifle.

"Oh come _on_. You're a soldier, my dear. Soldiers listen to orders. Extrapolate. Use your initiative. Go on." Moriarty's clearly had a good day - he only gets bored when all the pieces are falling into place. Sebastian steels himself for patience. Eventually, Moriarty will tire of needling him and slink away to snip or tug at a few more threads in his web, or spy on that private detective that he's become so obsessed with.

Had Sebastian been slightly more uncommon, had Moriarty been a fair degree more common, it was entirely possible that Sebastian might have long disregarded orders and put a bullet through Sherlock Holmes' head, by now, out of tactical repositioning if nothing else, or for the sake of their business. But he still retains a streak of rationality within him that had been bored deep by military discipline, and Sebastian knows that Moriarty's undivided attention, howsoever framed by Moriarty's definition of affection, would almost always prove fatal to its recipient in the end.

"Give me orders, then." Sebastian decides, carefully, and adds, "Sir," when Moriarty clucks his tongue, squirming over to press the edges of his bony knees against Sebastian's trousers.  


Moriarty hums, cheek pressed against his short-cropped hair, as Sebastian pushes the cleaning rod out and into the receiver, removing the soiled cleaning wad and pulling the rod back out. As he fits a fresh wad through the jib, Moriarty purrs, "I want to hear about the tiger."

Sebastian goes as far as to try and shift to glance up at Moriarty, eyebrows arched, but knees dig against his thighs and he stops, and soaks the cleaning wad in solvent, instead. As before, he finds it easier to simply assume that his strange, latest benefactor-employer knows everything by some sort of voodoo head magic. Sebastian has seen stranger things over the course of his military service. 

"There's not much to tell. I was in Kumaon, passing through to Nepal. A man-eater was terrorising a village. I wounded it, it tried to hide down a drain, I followed it down and killed it."

It had broken the canines on the right side of its jaws, an old injury that had prevented it from killing its normal prey. Sebastian had made its death clean, at least, a courtesy from one old hunter to another. 

"A Bengal?"

"I suppose. I don't know."

"How did you lure it? Or did you track it to its lair?" Moriarty's queries are clinical, but his arms shift over Sebastian's shoulders; he's straightening up onto his knees, his breathing going a shade quicker.  


"Tethered a young goat to a tree. Waited at a good vantage point."

"Tiger's learned not to fear humans," Moriarty muses out aloud, "It comes out during the day, doesn't it. It smells you, but the kid goat's better prey, it goes to take it, but it spooks at something. How did you miss?"

"A boy from the village came up the path. The tiger moved." 

"You must have hit its foreleg instead," Moriarty continues idly. "It flees the scene instead of staying to fight an unseen enemy. You follow it. You leave the rifle in the tree, it's too heavy, and you know you won't get another shot again, not like that. You use your pistol instead. You follow it to an old storm drain, one that the tiger knows - it won't go anywhere new, not when it's wounded and afraid. It's dark down in there, the tiger has an advantage. You can hold a pistol, or a torchlight-"

"Small torchlight, held it between my teeth." 

"The tiger breathes loudly, you can hear it, smell the animal stink of it. You know that it's desperate, angry and afraid. But you're not, so the game goes to you. You see the gleam of its eyes, and you brace your wrists, you fire," Moriarty continues dreamily, as though he hasn't interrupted. "Quick double tap, between the eyes. It goes down. Superior nerve, training and weaponry carry the day."

Sebastian doesn't comment, sliding the cleaning rod into the muzzle again with the ease of practice, and eventually, Moriarty lets out a loud sigh. "Let's have dinner," he decides, with his usual seemingly abrupt impulse. "We'll go somewhere pre _dict_ able. The Savoy, maybe, or Ramsey's. And later you can watch the kid goat that I've tethered out in Baker Street for me. Drop any of the tigers that get too close."

Sebastian breathes in, and the hunter breathes out. "Understood, sir."

"Good," Moriarty murmurs, warm breath trailing down to his ear, as pale palms slide up his arms to press lightly over his throat. "Good."

  


_games you play_  


They're bundled up in a sidewalk cafe in Meiringen, a pretty picture of a town in Switzerland, and Sebastian is actually beginning to relax when Moriarty grumbles, "I'm _bored_."

"You were the one who wanted to come here," Sebastian tells him mildly, "Sir." 

"Loose ends," Moriarty declares morosely, glowering at the white and brown houses as though he found them personally offensive. They'd found their budding indie filmmaker a couple of days ago, ambling around a nature walk near a ravine, and Moriarty had gleefully given him a little push over the edge, after telling him in earnest how _useful_ the hidden-compressor loop-and-fake-blood device had been. "I do so hate winning. There's so much tidying up to do, and then I have to find something new to amuse myself with. It's _awful_."

"That Sherlock bloke is still alive," Sebastian reminds him. Moriarty isn't the only one who's good at dancing with death, it seems. 

"But I've pulled his teeth and turned away his allies. He's alone. Easy prey." Moriarty glowers at his rapidly cooling coffee. "Maybe I should have held back. Made it more challenging for myself. Like having a golf handicap."

"He's still dangerous." 

"That he is." Moriarty looks momentarily cheered up at the thought, and then he catches Sebastian's expression and drapes on one of his awful plastic smiles. "He's just like me, Seb. You don't know what that feels like." 

Sebastian remembers meeting people who were like himself before, other snipers, often on the other end of the muzzle in the arid villages littered near the feet of the Hindu Kush, and usually, he's had to kill them before they kill him. He's felt no more kinship with other killers than with the wounded old Kumaon tiger, nor has he ever felt like seeking their company. However, he says nothing, cupping his long black instead, silent. Neither of them really should be out of London right now, but Moriarty had insisted.

"We still have to get rid of him sooner or later," Moriarty adds, if regretfully. "You can't have two kings on the board at the end." He glances at the open road, searchingly, scanning everyone's faces, then abruptly, he smiles again to himself, as if at a private joke. "No-o. You can't, can you?"

Sebastian follows Moriarty's gaze, but he doesn't see anyone particularly noteworthy. Tourists, mostly, and a few elderly residents, slowly ambling down the street. "I've got our people to keep an eye on him." 

"There's a waterfall close by, isn't there?" Moriarty asks, abruptly, with a skyward glance. "Let's walk there."

" _Now_?"

"I want to take a look at it," Moriarty declares, getting to his feet so quickly that the chair skids backwards. "After all," he lowers his tone, with his crooked smile, "I do so like symmetry."

Sebastian isn't an idiot, and sometimes it'll be nice if his boss remembers this. "The waterfall's called Reichenbach," he states accusingly, as Moriarty turns an absolutely insincere approximation of innocence at him. "If that Sherlock bloke is in town-"

"I still have one of my pieces," Moriarty interrupts, "And he has none. It'll just be a matter of a basic checkmate at this point. Still," he continues, brightening up visibly again, "Maybe it could entertain me for a few hours."

The CheyTac is in their hotel room, but he's wearing the Glock under his jacket, and Sebastian supposes, wearily, that this will have to do. "Did you know that he would come?"

"I would have been very disappointed if he hadn't." Moriarty turns on his heel and starts traipsing down the street; leaving Sebastian to pay up hastily and run to catch up. "Rook to e4, I think."

"What?"

Moriarty flaps his hand limply from the wrist at him, their usual signal for Sebastian to disappear and follow at a distance, but he doesn't have his rifle, and in any case it's the middle of the bloody day in a tiny little town that he hasn't scoped out, with no cover whatsoever to speak of, but Moriarty smirks at him even as he opens his mouth, and he shuts it, and nods instead.

"King and rook endgame, Sherlock," he hears Moriarty declare, in the middle of the goddamned street, his voice edged with sharp-edged glee, as Sebastian slips down a side street and slides his hand into his jacket. "Your move."

**Author's Note:**

> -fin: thanks for reading! I've tried to keep Sebastian's character and background closer to my memory of his character from the Conan Doyle books.-


End file.
